(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Yeah, it’s my second post today… so sue me. Ha! Oh, yeah. This ain’t the Great Orange Satan, is it? That’s good, because I just got an email informing me that Greg Sargent says It’s War: SEIU Starting Third Party In North Carolina.
In a shot across the bow of Dems, the labor powerhouse SEIU is starting a new third party in North Carolina that hopes to field its own slate of candidates, part of an effort to make the Democratic Party more reliable on issues important to labor…
An outgrowth of SEIU’s vow to hold Democrats in the U.S. House accountable for voting against health insurance reform and labor positions in general, the new party has a bare bones website up now, as it begins collecting the 85,000 signatures it will need to gain a place on the November ballot. Unless all of those signatures are gathered in the next week, North Carolina First won’t be on anybody’s primary ballots.
SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina on this effort, and has more than a hundred people on the ground now getting signatures. While there are a number of good potential candidates who might be persuaded to run NCF against turncoats such as Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, there are many more who would stand for state and county office on this ticket.
While it’s being played as a protest action against the Powers That Be, I believe this country is in desperate need of a real new political party to represent the half of American citizens who now have no representation since the Democrats took over Republican territory (and Republicans jumped like lemmings over the wacko cliff), I cannot think of anybody better to field one than labor.
So. It can’t be the “North Carolina First” party for very long, but it it takes off, we here in North Carolina will be happy to tell our great-grandchildren that it started here. I will be checking further into this story and hope to have some in-depth, on-the-scene info very soon through some contacts in Raleigh. Updates sure to come!
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…we’re probably going to need ’em when Exxon-Mobil figures out what’s going on… ยง;o)
the trend towards starting one party after another–when there are already–what-two Green Parties, Socialists of various kinds and so on. Still, a union has the people and money to organize, so it’s interesting.
party. Will follow and see what we can do from the left coast.
the rich dude who won’t be supporting the Democratic machine anymore are music to my ears. Thanks Joy B. Local and regional is where any real movement will begin. I have noticed that during the campaign here in OR, the unions stepped up and were part of the coalition that elected Obama and got rid of Smith. They are still at it here.
Working Families and the AFLCIO? have kept active and managed with the progressives and greens etc. and regular Dems. to pass the bill that increased state taxes on the corporation’s and individuals who make over 250,000$. Perhaps my precinct boss was right when she said when I quit over FISA that I should remember that Obama was not as important as the movement that came together to work for change.
The Democratic party’s arrogance may just be there undoing as the coalitions that gave them power were not fringe or left of the left but working people who know a bamboozle when they have to try and live with it. Populism is going to increase as they tighten the screws and a third party or parties will evolve locally and regionally. The so called center is pissed no matter how much the propaganda tries to place it as extreme or wacko.